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founded in 1762, applied for a charter, it was refused by the law officers of the Crown, on the ground that the success of the scheme depended upon the accuracy of certain tables of life and death "whereby the Chance of Mortality is attempted to be reduced to a certain standard. This is a mere speculation. never tried in practice" ("Encyclopædia Britannica"). Dr. Price's tables based upon the Northampton Bills of Mortality were subsequently employed for calculating Government annuities. This writer also deplores the decline in the population, in language which has a curiously modern ring. He says: "In consequence of the easy communication lately created between the different parts of the kingdom, the London fashions and manners and pleasures have been propagated everywhere, and almost every distant town and village now vies with the capital in all kinds of expensive dissipations and amusement. This enervates and debilitates; and together with our taxes raises everywhere the price of the means of subsistence, checks marriage, and brings on poverty, dependence and venality."
Another writer about this period makes the curious statement that, owing to the multiplication of chapels, it was no uncommon thing in some parts of the country for christenings (and some. times burials) to be registered twice over—first in the chapel register, and afterwards, for greater security, in that of the mother-church.
In 1773 Dr. Thomas Percival made an extensive investigation into the vital statistics of Manchester and adjacent places. He finds that each marriage produces about four and three-quarter children, and, unlike most of his contemporaries, comes to the conclusion that the population is increasing. He suggests that fertility has been promoted by the general use of tea, or possibly pepper and other spices.
Later writers on the Bills of Mortality were Dr. Mann-Burrows, in 1818, and Dr. Cleland, in 1836.
A few words must now be said concerning the names of diseases employed in the Bills of Mortality. These seem to have been selected with but little regard for even such scientific and medical knowledge as there was at the time. Ill-defined phrases and popular names abound. Though many of the terms soon became obsolete,
